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Palin’s Book: ‘Mom Moment’ With Tina Fey

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WSJ Staff

Nov 13, 2009 3:09 pm ET

Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg reports on politics.

One of the more unexpected aspects of the campaign was the emergence of actress Tina Fey as her stand-in on the television show “Saturday Night Live,” Sarah Palin writes in her new book, “Going Rogue: An American Life.”

“I had liked some seasons of SNL since I was a teenager, sneaking around to watch it so my parents wouldn’t catch me,” Palin writes. “So when she began impersonating me, it was a bit surreal.”

When she finally met Fey while preparing to appear on the show, Palin says, the actress was “friendly and gracious.” And when the two women were together, Fey’s young daughter, Alice, found the experience confusing. “Without managers and handlers swarming around–“Don’t say this, don’t say that”–it was just a nice mom moment,” writes Palin.

Also on the show that evening, she writes, were Alec Baldwin, Josh Brolin, Mark Wahlberg, the singer Adele, and the director Oliver Stone. Stone, she writes, is a “supporter of Communist dictator Hugo Chavez” who once referred to the president as “the devil himself.”

Palin says she refused to shake Stone’s hand.

The high point may have come when the lights dimmed, she suggested. “Then I stepped onto the famous set and got to say the words that have become a permanent part of American culture: ‘Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night.’”